Too cold though. And no reaction as Kyrja tugged, trying to free her from the jumble of broken table and splintered chair. “Mamma.” She eased around to a different angle and wrapped her arms around her mother’s thick sweater. “Mamma, come on. Be alive. Be all right. Please, Mamma, I’m not ready to lose you.”
No response. Kyrja caught a sob as it tried to slip past her lips, wrestled it down, and pulled her mother out of the wreckage, toward the open space where she’d put her sister.
She knew, of course. Even as she lowered her gently to the floor, she knew there was no way fragile, aging Mamma with her brittle bones and aching joints had survived that crushing blow. Not if her daughter hadn’t. Not if her son hadn’t.
Einar. She’d somehow heard Nik’s words without processing them, but now she flew across the space under the slab, to the other side, where the stranger was pressing his ear to Einar’s chest, his fingers to his throat.
Freya already lay in the Fjordic position of final rest, her eyes closed, arms folded at the waist, body in a perfect line. As she watched, Nik moved Einar into the same pose. Taking care to arrange him perfectly, while she’d just left her mother and sister however she’d dropped them.
Guilt pierced, but it was quickly eclipsed by something softer. Gentler.
Gratitude. This stranger who didn’t know them, never met them, and clearly hadn’t wanted to—unlike his friend—took the time and care to give this dignity.
She had to pivot away before the pressure at the back of her eyes could turn to shameful tears. So she pretended to check under the slab for anyone else, even though she knew no one else would have been at that table other than her and Fodur. Once she’d made certain, she managed a weak, “Stand clear,” and then lowered the slab back down.
It only took her a minute to give her mother and sister the same attention the stranger had spared for her brother and sister-in-law. But her hands shook as she closed their eyes. Straightened their spines. Arranged their limbs.
They couldn’t be gone. They couldn’t—it was impossible. There was no such thing as a day without her sister’s snippingand rebuking. Without her brother’s patient instruction. Without Mamma’s eyes brimming with love. If they were gone, then surely Kyrja was too, or would be.
She didn’t know how to exist without them.
“Would anyone else have been in here? Servants?”
Jolting, she pulled her gaze from her mother’s too-still face to where Nik had come to her side. He was covered in ash and soot and sympathy, but that same determination she’d noted in him on the steps still gleamed through the grim.
The words clattered around inside a moment before resolving into sense. Of course he was concerned for more people thanherpeople—and that was to his credit. Her family was gone, as inconceivable as that was.
But others could well be alive in this wreck of a wing, waiting for rescue. Kyrja drew in a breath, blinked the burdensome feelings back into their places, and forced her mind to work. “Not in here—Freya could never get accustomed to the idea of people waiting on her. But we should keep going. There are undoubtedly people injured elsewhere who we can help.”
He reached out, not even hesitating before resting a hand on her forearm—something no one from Reykstoll would ever do without her express permission. To purposefully touch a Blessed without invitation, without her reaching out first, was punishable by up to a year in prison.
His gaze was so far from malicious though that she knew he either didn’t know the law or saw her only as a person just now, not a Blessed. Not a princess. “You can stay here with them,” he said so softly she could scarcely hear him. “If you want to. I’ll do what I can elsewhere.”
“No.” In part because the idea of being left alone with the empty husks that had once been her family was as crushing as that slab of obsidian, yes. But it wasn’t only that. “You’ll need my help to move things and douse fires.” Something tickled hercheek, and she swiped at it, startled to feel the wetness on her fingertips.
“Are you certain?” His hand drifted away from her arm. “You ought to remain where it’s safe, Your Highness—”
“No.” At least she sounded firm this time. “I ought to help as many as I can. That’s the whole point of the Blessing.”
“Yes, but…” He glanced past her, down. Over. “Forgive my bluntness, Highness, but you’re the only remaining heir to the throne. Your safety is of the utmost importance.”
She jumped, his words a shock as bright and piercing as lightning. That couldn’t be. She was never supposed to be the Heir. She was the pet, the decoration, the one with no purpose beyond giving her mother someone to coddle and cuddle. The weight of Fjordlandi couldn’t possibly rest on her shoulders.
“That…” Denials tripped over each other, but something about his face stilled them. The calm expectation in his green eyes. The lack of question, the acceptance, the certainty that she could be what she was—a daughter of King Isidor and Consort Andresa, as surely as her brother and sister had been. She cleared her throat. “That is beside the point. My father is still alive and well, and I wouldn’t be worthy of my place in this family if I didn’t do all I could to help right now. My safety is secondary. We exist to serve our people.”
Something glinted in his eyes, softened the line of his mouth, something she’d seen so rarely she struggled to find the word for it. Even when she recognized it—approval, admiration even—she couldn’t quite accept that it was for her.
And it didn’t matter. They hadn’t time for such things. With one last sniff to get herself under control, she called up water and, with a slow move of her hand, encased each of her family members in ice to preserve and protect them.
The next hour blurred into the following, her muscles aching more with each person she helped pull from the wreckage.Where there should have been ceiling and roof above them, open sky stretched—too open, the clouds Krystiana usually held over them breaking up and parting, letting a rare sunset paint the world in reds and golds that might have been beautiful if they didn’t echo the fires still spurting up here and there. Wind blew in off the harbor, sending all the smoke inland.
Someone would have to regather the clouds before too much longer, or the night would bring with it a cold that could kill as surely as the blast had.
They’d found survivors. Not enough, but each set of eyes she saw blink open, each cough she heard was cause to smile. Other workers in all manners of dress had found their way inside by that point, with Dania leading the medical help from a triage unit she’d set up just outside the palace. They’d exchanged a nod, her friend’s eyes so full of relief that Kyrja hadn’t had to wonder what had brought the doctor dashing their way. She’d have feared Kyrja was in the blast.
She would have been, had she not been stopped by Rafnar, who they’d also spotted a bit ago, lending his bulky muscles to the efforts underway in the servants’ quarters. More people were found alive there, anyway, farther from the central blast.
Exhaustion clawed its way onto her limbs, bit by bit. She’d have to rest soon, or at least find food or water to renew her energy enough to keep going. Adrenaline could only carry her so far.
